The homecoming memorial service for Grandpa Al Lewis will be held Saturday, February 18th
from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive at 120th Street in Manhattan.
From vaudeville to television, Al Lewis entertained millions and became best known for his portrayal
of Grandpa on the Munsters TV series.
Among other things, Grandpa championed prison reform, veterans' rights, ran for the governorship
of New York, actively opposed the Rockefeller drug laws, and for over a decade hosted Al
Lewis Live over WBAI.
So come out in tribute to this great warrior for peace and justice, Saturday, February
18th from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Riverside Church, 120th Street and Riverside Drive in Manhattan.
For more information, call 212-209-2834.
That's 212-209-2834.
The service will be broadcast live over your listener-sponsored non-commercial radio station
WBAI 99.5 FM in New York City.
And the place isn't the same without Grandpa Al.
It's 7.01, time on WBAI New York for Off The Hook.
Now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Manuel Goldstein here with you on this exciting Wednesday evening.
As we're joined by the usual cast of characters here.
Jim, over there.
Hello.
And Mike.
Hi.
And what's making that noise?
I bet you know.
Well, it was happening when I was turning the phone up.
Bernie, are you there?
Bernie, you were beeping.
Bernie's no longer here.
Apparently he's beeped into oblivion.
I don't know what's going on.
We had Bernie on the phone, and now he's beeped away.
Redbird, you're here.
Junce, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Good evening.
You're here, too.
I was just so excited to see Junce here, because he's never here.
Welcome.
Junce is the person, of course, behind getting us on the Internet broadcast-wise.
And I hope that's going on tonight, even though you're here.
It should be, but I hope so, too.
I think he put somebody else on the treadmill.
Undoubtedly, if it messes up, it's going to be now when you're not on duty.
That's typical, yeah.
And Arsene is here, as well.
Hello.
How are you doing?
Well, apart from the vice president shooting people,
has anything of excitement happened this week that you guys want to touch upon?
That's pretty exciting.
It is pretty exciting, I know.
It's going to be the thing to bring down the presidency.
Of all the things he's done, this is going to be the one.
Oh, come on.
You think?
Well, why would he bring down the presidency?
I don't know.
Unless he's gunning for the president next.
It's turning into a scandal.
Nothing else ever turns into a scandal.
This is no more serious than Chappaquiddict, and we let Ted Kennedy slide on that.
Now, there was no gunfire involved in Chappaquiddict.
Well, there was a death, though.
Just death, yes, but no gunfire.
And he didn't tell anybody for a long period of time,
and he alleges that he attempted to perform aid.
Well, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
I'll say that he did, but he didn't tell anybody else when he said he tired
and gave up and sat on the shore for hours.
You know, I have to hand it to you, Jim.
You should be working for the Republican administration
because you have so skillfully deflected the attention away from what we're talking about.
There's something that happened 150 years ago.
I support shooting of hunters.
You support the shooting of hunters?
Absolutely.
Okay.
Well, you know, we can get into that.
We can get into that whole thing.
But first, before we do that, we really should probably try to get Bernie back.
Who wants to try to do that?
Mike, you're going to do that?
Okay.
While you're doing that, I want to thank the people who have made it possible for us to be on this week,
and, of course, those are the people who called in last week with their generous pledges.
And we won't be on next week.
As you may have heard, there's a new special scheduled for next week.
But we will be on hopefully in two weeks after.
In fact, I'm pretty sure we're going to be on in two weeks.
But we want to thank these people who called in with their generous pledges.
Gerald from Brooklyn.
Ross from Livingston, New Jersey.
Kevin from Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.
Dennis from Staten Island.
By the way, we may have read some of these last week as well.
Forgive us if we read your name twice.
Gene from Brooklyn.
Greg from Scotch Plains, New Jersey.
Bob from Stockton, New Jersey.
Nilsen.
Nilsen?
Nilsen from Jamaica.
Richard from West Hempstead.
John from College Point.
Demetrios from Bayside.
Daniel from Albany.
Anna from Manhattan.
David from Cortland Manor, New York.
Anita from Manhattan.
Jack and Julia from Woodside.
Jeff from Brooklyn.
Michael from Wontaw.
Javier from Brooklyn.
Alan from CIFAR, which is over there in the U.K.
I believe in Scotland.
Daniel from Parone.
It says Parone, AR.
Is that Argentina?
Oh, no, that's Arkansas.
Okay, I'm sorry.
Well, I don't know.
It's the same code either way.
David from Bloomfield, New Jersey.
Marie from the Bronx.
We mentioned Bob from Water Street.
I remember that one.
Saajid, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, from Manhattan.
Michael from Bloomington, Illinois.
Charles from Brooklyn.
Sarah from Dobbs Ferry.
And I think that's pretty much it.
I have a question.
Yes.
How can I join that illustrious list of supporters?
Well, of course, if you listened last week, you may already know the answer to that.
A lot of people were gnashing their teeth because they weren't able to take advantage of what we were doing last week.
Well, we're doing it again this week, okay?
For one week only, we're extending the offer of what we were offering last week.
And that is three different pledge levels.
Actually, it's an infinite number of pledge levels because you can always pledge a dime or pledge $10 million, and we're not going to refuse either way.
Don't pledge a dime, please.
We have $25 for an off-the-hook t-shirt, which are really, really cool, even though I see no one is wearing one today.
It's cold.
It's supposed to be cold.
It wasn't cold.
You're still wearing a shirt.
You can wear things on top of the shirts.
That's the beauty of shirts.
All right, whatever.
We're all wearing them deep underneath what we have on top.
Yeah, well, it's so deep I can't see it.
But they are cool shirts despite people not wearing them here.
That's for a pledge of $25.
In fact, every pledge of $25 and over will get you that.
The number is 212-209-2950.
Pledge of $75.
Who wants to tackle this one?
If you pledge $75, you get not only the aforementioned awesome shirt but the TV-B-Gone.
What, pray tell, is a TV-B-Gone?
Well, it's a device that turns off any television with just one press of the button.
It's very handy, and we spoke to the inventor last week.
You sound thrilled about this.
It's very handy.
It is.
You can turn off televisions.
If they're in a bar or if they're on the street, it's great.
But the TV is still there.
It's not really TV-B-Gone.
It's TV screen, TV picture-B-Gone, right?
TV power-B-Off.
Well, that's not true either because the power is still going to the set.
Unless you actually unplug it, there's still power.
But we're including an awesome feature with this where it's also a TV-B-On.
Well, it can be.
Not every time.
Well, it's a feature.
But most TVs do.
The same button turns it on and off.
So if it's already off, you can hit that button and it'll turn on.
So that's for a pledge of how much?
That's $75.
For $75, they can become part of the elite crew that walks around turning TVs off whenever they feel like it.
And that's the 202-209-2950.
A lot of people called in for that last week.
It's a very popular item.
We had no idea that so many people really want to have these things.
Well, there's a lot of TVs and a lot of people want them off.
I know.
I know.
It's good to see them empowering themselves like this.
As I said last week, every time I come in the studio here, I have to turn off the TV.
Yeah, but this one doesn't have a remote control, so you have to walk over and lean over.
I know.
It's very annoying.
You have to crawl all over people.
I have to walk on the board and disrupt the sliders.
I don't know why there's a TV in here in the first place.
It's a radio station, but let's not get into that.
And then there is finally – well, actually, there are technically two more, but there's one more item that we have to offer.
And that is the High Fidelity Off-the-Hook DVD Lifetime Subscription.
And basically what that is is every episode of this radio program since the very first pilot episode back in 1988 and up until – well, up until the future really.
Because you're going to keep getting them as long as they keep coming out in high fidelity sound as opposed to what you might hear on the internet.
You'll hear something that sounded just as it did when it went over the FM airwaves however many years ago it was.
In fact, we're going to be playing some highlights of some shows this week again.
It's even, I believe, higher fidelity than the high fidelity stuff on the internet.
I don't even know what that means.
That's okay.
How could it be higher fidelity than high fidelity?
There's high fidelity and there's higher fidelity.
All right.
Well, you're going to have a troop of audiophiles storming in here correcting you on whatever terminology you use.
But I'm not quite sure what higher fidelity is.
This is high enough.
I think so.
You can't get any higher than this I don't think.
No.
So what you'll get, you'll get all the DVDs that have been released so far and then you will get – in the future, every time a DVD is released, you'll be on our list.
Which is every year.
Every year we release the previous year.
That's true.
So that's for a pledge of $100.
You'll get that plus the shirt.
If you want everything, if you want the off-the-hook DVD lifetime subscription, if you want the TV be gone and if you want the off-the-hook T-shirt, a pledge of $150.
Yes, that's it.
$150 will get you all of that.
212-209-2950.
Bernie, you join us now.
I'm back.
I'm sorry I was using Sprint PCS which dumped my call.
Well, one common thread throughout the years is hearing Bernie complain about Sprint PCS as well as whatever other technology he happened to be using at the time.
But I'm glad to be on and I was listening in the meantime while you're trying to get a hold of me again on our shortwave feed.
Yes, we are simulcast on shortwave.
7415 kilohertz and I noticed though tonight there's no six-second delay.
So watch your language.
Well, we weren't going to take phone calls tonight because it's a pledge show and we have a lot to cover.
What if you talk out of line and start using some language?
Well, I'm trying to control myself.
It's been tough but so far I've managed to do it.
There's a lot to be angry about.
Yeah.
Well, there is.
There is.
I guess that's the challenge today in modern society is to get through it all without using FCC language.
Okay.
So Bernie, do you have anything that – any stories that you think we should be focusing attention on as we do every week at this time?
By the way, we have no calls on the line by the way, 212-209-2950.
We have no more secret offers.
This is it.
This is the offers we're making.
We're making at the top of the hour to get them out of the way so we can talk more about what we talk about.
There's some very nice volunteers who I met just before coming in and they really want to take calls.
That's what they're here for.
Yeah.
All right.
212-209-2950.
Well, I'm here in Philadelphia.
My work obligations don't permit me to get to the WBAI studios in time for the show, so I appreciate you being on the phone with me.
But I have a local story here.
Our local mass transit agency, SEPTA, the Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority, has just purchased two suitcases.
What do you mean they just purchased two suitcases?
Well, they just purchased two suitcases for their counterterrorism efforts here.
What is the claim that these suitcases do?
Well, for the nominal price of $300,000 apiece, these magic suitcases can see through up to an inch, supposedly,
see up through an inch of steel and identify it's a neutron detector.
They can identify the chemical structure of whatever is on the other side of this inch of steel or whatever in the knapsack or whatever they put next to it.
So if they find a bag left on the subway or platform or something like that and get the bomb threat call,
they can run over there with this 100-pound $300,000 suitcase, which they bought two of, and you put the thing next to the suitcase.
And if you go to highenergyinc.com, you can see the spec sheet on this amazing device called the Sigma 3E3.
It's only a $300,000 suitcase.
I want to know what happens if somebody runs off with this suitcase.
It's $300,000.
So all the plotter need do is obtain two inches of steel?
One inch, just one inch.
No, but it can see through one inch.
So if the evildoer has two inches, is that –
Or one inch and one millimeter.
That's over an inch.
They can't see through it.
I took a look at the PDF brochure for this device and it looked very silly actually.
I thought the GUI – it's worth our listeners going to highenergyinc.com and looking at the graphic user interface for this thing.
It's really kind of funny.
And just the presentation of – you would think that there would be a lot of technical details and a lot of stuff in this brochure like to kind of awe you.
And it's just very, very simplistic.
The GUI looks really ridiculous like something Fisher Price would have designed for like a two-year-old to operate.
What do you want for $300,000?
Really?
But I mean if you look at this thing, there's a – literally there's a box and it's – I guess it turns red or green based on whether or not there's an explosive inside.
And it says, this is an explosive with two exclamation points and also –
They're designing this for people who definitely – who may not be able to read to operate.
The operators may not be –
They entrust those people with a $300,000 device?
The TSA you're talking about, right?
I've met some of the septic security people.
I'm sorry.
Not all of them seem quite to be quite literate.
I have a more high-tech concern.
Maybe I'm forgetting my college physics, but I always thought that if you had a slightly subcritical mass of plutonium or uranium, that the way that you set it off was by bombarding it with neutrons.
Wouldn't that do it in this case?
Supposedly a particle accelerator inside this thing.
Right, but what I'm saying is somebody comes along with just enough uranium or plutonium inside their little knapsack and they go to where they're using this in a test run or they threaten, you know, we have an explosive at the 30th Street Station.
And they come along with this suitcase and bombard it with neutrons, which sets the A-bomb off.
Yeah, that would be rather ironic, wouldn't it?
Yes, it would.
Again, what do you want for $300,000?
Yeah, we should spend more, I think, and just keep this up.
Sure. It's all about you throw enough money at it and the problem will go away.
I mean, how many hundreds of billions have been thrown at Homeland Security so far?
I don't know, but I'd like to throw something else at them, and maybe we can gather some things together.
Say that on the air.
Say that, want to throw things at Homeland Security?
They'll be here in an instant.
Why don't you just get Dick Cheney to shoot them?
Not with the elevators downstairs, they won't be here in an instant, that's for sure.
All right, well, they'll be here when they can.
Okay, so we have other issues as well, many issues.
We always have issues.
Let's discuss yesterday's holiday.
Yesterday's holiday. Tell us about yesterday's holiday.
No Love for Google Day.
Why? Explain.
Well, a number of people, Students for a Free Tibet is the organization.
They have a website, nolov, L-U-V, very post-'60s, for the number four, google.org.
And they insist that with Google's kowtowing, I love to use the word in this case,
to the Chinese government and eliminating untoward, unwanted, unpopular to the Chinese government references on google.cn.
And the Students for a Free Tibet also complain about Yahoo and MSN and just about every major search engine.
The site insisted that start boycotting Google and the others as of yesterday, Valentine's Day.
How do you boycott Google?
It's tough. It's really tough.
They actually have some suggestions, which unfortunately I don't know of offhand.
Read off a couple of suggestions.
Icerocket.com.
Okay.
It's like boycotting heroin.
Yes, it's like boycotting heroin, exactly.
It's a very good point.
Not only Ice Rocket, but...
All right. We'll tell you when you have the story out.
Plus the .com.
You can get more information at either the nolov4google site or at opennet.net.
All right. Well, this kind of thing was inevitable when you start playing ball with oppressive governments.
But again...
I don't see what's so bad about it.
About what?
About them censoring content so that they can, you know, be used in China.
Okay. I'm going to stand back on this one.
Go ahead. Go ahead, Mike.
Well, the thing is that people talk about the firewall of China as though it's some, like, abstract thing,
which is just imagined by the Chinese bureaucrats and then summoned into existence.
But actually you can, like, look at this.
And what it looks like is routers made by a company called Cisco, which is, of course, based in California,
and running software, probably, which is manufactured by a company called Microsoft, which is based in Washington State.
And the point is that the entire firewall censorship apparatus is built on American technology.
And if these American corporations said that they would not do business in this manner,
then the censorship apparatus would really crumble.
Well, it can crumble already.
There's all sorts of methods to tunnel out of it.
But if you're looking at it from, you know, Google's perspective, you're bringing content into the country,
but just, you know, you're allowing your search technology to work in that country,
even though, you know, the government wants you to censor stuff.
I just don't see why it's such a horrible thing.
You know, if the citizens want to tunnel out and get access to Google.com instead of the Chinese version, they can do that.
Well, what are they facing if they do that?
They're facing all kinds of prosecution, I'm sure, if they try that.
And if Google refuses, then, you know, then they don't have access to Google in China.
Okay, and then China has to come up with something else, some other way to access the Internet.
Yeah, let's try an analogy.
Let's pretend that the Internet existed in 1933 in the same way that it does now.
And Microsoft existed, Google existed, and you had the Nazis going on.
Now, remember what you know now about the Nazis.
You'd have some of the ugliest websites in existence.
Aside from that.
But people in Germany would have an opportunity to learn about the actions of their government
and either decide for themselves whether to support it or to overthrow their government.
They're not going to have access to this whether or not Google decides to censor their content.
In other words, my point is the addition of this censored version of Google coming to China
does not decrease the ability – it only increases but does not decrease the search capability of –
the existing search capability of most Chinese people.
It increases it somewhat.
It doesn't increase it to the level that we have, but it's an improvement.
I agree it's not perfect, but it's getting there.
Well, what it really increases is the profit margin for Google.
I mean, that's really what this is all about.
True.
That's why they're doing it.
But in addition to that, now the Chinese citizens have access to Google search technology.
I just don't see how it's harmful.
And Bernie summed it up very well.
All right.
Well, we could spend a whole hour talking about this for sure.
But we really do have to move on.
We only have an hour and it won't be on next week.
So we have clips that we want to play of Off the Hook in the past.
And I think, Mike, you selected this first one.
You want to tell us something about it?
Sure.
This is a clip from – do you remember the year?
1996?
1996.
You have it written down here.
Yeah.
I remember it was March.
March 12, 1996.
Okay.
In which the folks who were on the show at the time are talking about some technology to transmit voice over the internet
and how the telecommunications companies were really interested in stopping it.
Wow.
So it's kind of similar to some of the things we're hearing today, I guess.
Yes.
And it's infancy.
All right.
This is from the DVD from March 1996 of Off the Hook, which for some reason isn't playing.
I gave in my opening statement.
Whoops.
Sorry.
Probably the wrong thing.
We'll explain what that is later.
This is Off the Hook from 1996.
The other thing that scared me this week was the iPhone situation.
Have you heard about that?
No.
Various companies are kind of upset by this.
As we knew they would be last year and we talked about it.
Trade Association of Long Distance Phone Service Carriers has asked the FCC to halt companies from selling software
and hardware products that enable use of the internet for long distance voice services.
In a statement from Washington, the America's Carriers Telecommunication Association says it submits that it is incumbent upon the FCC
to exercise jurisdiction over the use of the internet for unregulated interstate and international telecommunications service.
A growing number of companies sell such software with hardware for transmitting and receiving voice over the net,
which says the statement creates the ability to bypass local long distance and international carriers
and allows for calls to be made for virtually no cost.
Well, I say that's great.
You know, if you can make a phone call for no cost, what is the problem?
Apparently these people are upset that they won't be able to make money off their particular businesses
because people have figured out a way around them.
I guess they'd outlaw conversation if they could.
For example, adds the ACTA statement, online service providers generally charge users around $10 for five hours of access
and then around $3 for each additional hour.
Five hours equals 300 minutes divided by $10 is 3.3 cents per minute.
The average residential long distance telephone call costs about 22 cents per minute or seven times as much.
That's in their little world anyway.
Long distance and international telephone service carriers must be approved by the FCC to operate
and must file tariffs before both the FCC and state public service commissions.
ACTA says technology may once again be surpassing government's ability to control its proper use.
I love that statement.
That's a great quote.
Technology is surpassing government's ability to control its proper use.
However, the misuse of the internet as a way to bypass the traditional means of obtaining long distance service
could result in a significant reduction of the internet's ability to transport its ever enlarging amount of data traffic.
So, I don't know if that's a threat or what, but...
I say that's just less money in the man's pocket.
Yeah, that's something.
We knew they'd get upset about it, but I mean, they have to get with it, you know?
iPhone is here to stay and there'll be more programs like that.
People will be using the net for all kinds of things, transmitting data.
What if we just wrote our own?
What if they outlawed iPhone?
We just wrote our own iPhone.
Would they make it illegal for us to use iPhone?
They would make it illegal for you.
Well, it's like the software Bernie S. got locked up for having, you know,
even though he was responsible for writing it or for putting it out.
It doesn't matter.
It does something that they don't want you to do.
In his case, make copies of cellular phone numbers.
In our case, it would be allowing communication by voice over the net.
They have no conception of how the technology works.
They have no conception of what our goals and motives are.
They just say, oh, this violates the tariff.
This violates the law.
Therefore, you must pay a penalty or go to prison, and that's just the way it is.
So that's kind of an ominous development.
I don't know if it's going to go anywhere, but it's something we should all be aware of,
especially those of us who use those particular programs.
I haven't used one in a while.
Have you?
Well, I guess we don't ever know because we cut it off at that point, but it's amazing.
It's amazing to me.
That was March 12, 1996.
Every time we pick a show at random, which is what we've been doing this week and last week,
we find something that pertains to today in some way, and this is no exception, right?
No.
I was listening to this program, which, as you said, I picked at random,
and there were all kinds of interesting things in it.
So talk about iPhone and using the net for voice connectivity and things like that.
Back 10 years ago, getting the DVD set, you'll hear a virtually unlimited number of interesting things like this.
So for a pledge of $100, you'll get a lifetime subscription to every single program in high-fidelity sound.
Yeah, you might have heard some tape hiss on that one, but they don't all have that much tape hiss.
In fact, the one we hear next, I think that's the one you picked out, Bernie.
It sounds really quite good.
For a pledge of $100, you'll get everything that we've ever put out on WBAI.
You see, the thing is I didn't have the high-fidelity CD, so I had no way to determine tape hiss versus just MP3 sounding iffy.
But with the high-fidelity one, you can tell for sure.
Well, yeah, you can tell there's tape.
I guess that's a disadvantage to high-fidelity is that you can tell there's tape hiss.
But, you know, the sound quality of the voice and the music and everything else that we do will come through much, much better.
We're coming out with the Dolby versions.
No, we're not.
And the sensor-round thing is another vicious rumor that I want to quell right now.
This is it.
I don't think it's ever going to get any better unless we somehow are able to incorporate 3D into it or something.
We have two calls on the line, 212-209-2950, and we have $350 so far, which is pretty good.
Our goal last week was $2,000 in the hour, and, you know, we broke $3,000, which I was very happy, very happy and very surprised.
Do you think we can do it again?
I don't know.
I don't want to tempt fate, but I would like to crack $1,000 at the very least.
212-209-2950.
At 8 o'clock, the personal commuter people are coming in, and, you know, they will be doing their own thing.
You won't be able to get this past 8 o'clock.
In fact, you won't be able to get this after this show because we're not on again during the marathon as far as I know, unless something unexpected happens.
So 212-209-2950.
$25 is the off-the-hook T-shirt, 25 and up.
75 is the TV be gone.
$100 is the off-the-hook DVD collection, lifetime subscription, and $150 is all three.
That's right.
That's right.
212-209-2950.
Fascinating listening to all these shows, and I've listened to them probably more than anybody because I had to go through and rearrange them when we re-encoded them all last year and re-released the low-fidelity DVD.
So there's always something in there, though.
There's always something to listen to, some bit of history.
Bernie, we had your whole saga unfold in front of us.
We made reference to it on this show 10 years ago because it had just happened that you had been locked away in prison just for possession of some technology.
Do you think that could happen today?
I think even more likely it's happening today.
In fact, I think I was actually incarcerated.
I was in prison at the time that that last clip was originally aired.
Were you still in prison at that point?
I was.
Oh, wow.
That was March of 96, correct?
Yes.
Yes, I was incarcerated from March of 95 until September of 96.
So I might have actually been on.
There were quite a few weeks where I was actually on the show from a prisoner pay phone.
Oh, yes.
And I remember that show.
As I was hearing that clip, Emanuel, I remember that show, and I haven't gone back and played that one because it's just kind of painful to play it back.
I can imagine.
I can imagine.
So I remember that hearing Jeff talk.
It was Jeff Flash that was referring about less money in a man's pocket kind of thing.
That was FiberOptic.
Was it?
I thought that was Jeff.
In any case, I think I remember that conversation being on the prison pay phone in the background.
Wow.
Well, of course, we have heard Bernie calling in on numerous occasions in 1995, 1996, and, of course, 1994.
Our friend FiberOptic was in prison.
He would call in occasionally.
Then we had the whole Kevin Mitnick thing that went on.
Add to that all the other events of the world that have changed things so much in the last 20 or so years, and it's a real time capsule.
It really is.
You can just listen to this and see how things have changed and see how technology has changed too.
When we make phone connections to people, it just sounds so different.
You call people on the phone.
Remember we used to be able to call an operator.
You'd hit zero, and it would be New York Telephone.
Can I help you?
Now you've got to battle through this whole James Earl Jones-like maze to get anywhere.
Is it still James Earl Jones?
I'm pretty sure it is.
I don't even ever try anymore.
If I could figure out how to get Verizon on this phone, which I don't think we can do.
But, no, I think that's the case.
Things have just gotten very different and, in many ways, very difficult.
I can't say I'm very happy with that.
We have three calls on the line, 212-209-2950.
You made mention of the TV be gone.
Let's go over that again.
It's this magical little device that allows you to walk anywhere, press a button,
and a TV that's in front of you will go off.
Well, the TV has to be in front of you first, yeah, but that's the idea.
Yeah, it's not going to suddenly materialize.
And that's for a pledge of $75.
You'll get that in addition to the off-the-hook T-shirt.
I've got to say something about that device.
Go ahead.
It's really, you've got to have this thing.
It's like, well, I wouldn't know, but it's probably better than heroin.
What's with all the heroin references?
It's probably better than heroin.
But, no, this thing fits on your keychain.
It looks just like a TV car unlocker thing.
It's very inconspicuous and unobtrusive looking.
And you just press a button, and if there's a TV within 20 feet or so that you're line of sight to,
you can shut it off.
It can be anywhere.
It can be a big wall of TVs at a trade show.
Last year, a friend of mine who was involved with the video game industry went to E3.
It's a huge video game conference.
And he was in front of the Nintendo booth, which had a 40-foot wall of flat-screen TV sets.
Oh, boy.
Guess what?
What an anarchist.
The whole thing just went blank, and they were panicking.
But it was great.
And then he had to go to the Sony booth and be fair and do them, too.
So you can have a lot of fun with this thing, and it has a very productive purpose.
It's good, clean fun.
It really is.
There's just way too many TVs on in our society.
They ought to be shut off.
You should listen to the radio.
You should listen to Off the Hook and other stimulating programs.
It's the perfect thing for radio listeners who want to turn off TV sets.
Exactly.
Jim?
Well, no, wait, wait.
I needed this this past weekend for the opposite reason.
I was out in the snowstorm, and I was going by an electronics store near my house.
And they had the TVs in the window, and they were off.
And I wanted to see how much more snowstorm was left.
And I wanted to have a TV be gone at that moment.
I rude the day I was born because I did not have a TV be gone at that time.
Well, then.
You see, you can avoid winding up like Jim here and making that phone call now.
Is that all you need to do?
Mean for it to sound so condemning?
No.
202-209-2950.
And please, no more references to heroin.
We're going to get all kinds of, like, CUNY letters here that heroin users of New York.
A very powerful lobbying group.
Don't need that.
Basically, oh, we have people to thank.
Excellent.
We're close to 525, so we're more than halfway to my personal goal.
We can surpass that goal.
Mike, you seem to have a higher goal than me tonight.
202-209-2950.
We have three, four different pledge levels.
And the volunteers down there will be more than happy to help you.
Country code one for those of you outside the U.S.
And we know about you.
Go ahead, Mike.
We want to thank David from Brooklyn.
And Jeff from Columbus, Ohio.
Alan from Manhattan.
And Andrew from Kamoka, I think, which is in Ontario, Canada.
Wow.
I've never heard of that town.
Let me see that.
See if I can recognize the name of that.
Wow.
It's spelled with a K.
K-O-M-O-K-A.
Cool.
I like hearing about these little Ontario towns.
I assume it's a little town.
But excellent.
Thanks very much for calling in.
I have to say something about Andrew.
You have to say something about Andrew?
Well, don't insult him.
Yeah.
Andrew contacted us over the week, half-week, by e-mail.
Okay.
And Andrew works in the General Motors assembly plant up there in Canada.
No kidding.
Wow.
He right now is on the line, on the assembly line, building trucks for General Motors.
And he took a break off the assembly line to call in to Off the Hook.
Because he listens to Off the Hook on the General Motors assembly line building trucks.
He listens to Off the Hook on his MP3 player with recorded shows.
And I think that was really amazing listener dedication.
This guy listens to Off the Hook while he's building trucks for General Motors in Canada.
And he took a break off the assembly line to call in and support the show.
I mean, that is terrific.
Oh, that's amazing.
But my question is, is our voice now resounding all throughout the General Motors plant up
there in Ontario, and everybody's pointing and laughing at this moment?
Or is it just basically playing into Andrew's head, then he's kind of chortling to himself?
Well, I think, to paraphrase General Motors, what's good for General Motors is good for
Canada.
That doesn't really answer the question, but okay.
Were you expecting an answer?
No, but greetings to everybody out there in the General Motors plant, if you are listening.
And please build a truck for us.
Thank you, Andrew.
Yes, thank you very much for your generous support there.
Now, Bernie, you're next up here.
You have a clip for us.
You want to tell us something about the show that you selected?
This is the first post-9-11 clip or episode of Off the Hook.
And obviously, things were in a state of chaos still in New York City there.
And I just wanted to get some retrospective, because we've been hearing about this 9-11
for the past, what, four and a half years now?
Yeah, I guess so.
And time really flies, but a lot of the same stuff we're hearing doesn't really change.
And you were talking with someone from another WBA program called Nuff Said, a gentleman
named Ken, and you were talking about your shared fears about the potential loss of civil
liberties after 9-11.
There was a lot of talk about this ATA, this Anti-Terrorism Act, before Patriot was coined,
before all that was printed up yet, although it had probably been written before 9-11.
And you make some other points, but one good point I thought was very prescient was that
there were many losses of civil liberties there during World War II that really weren't
restored until after Watergate's power abuses shifted public opinion to the point to get
legislation passed, such as the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, which formed the FISA court,
which our current administration is ignoring the laws that are along those lines.
And you didn't want to wait another several decades for another Watergate to get our civil
rights restored again.
Well, guess what?
I don't want to wait that long either.
And then further on, if you play the whole clip, you expressed something that you expressed
just in last week's show, which rings true today, that the Americans' general disinterest
in world news, you were talking about...
Well, don't spoil the surprise, Bernie, if I'm going to say it.
Well, BBC news, BBC World, you just can't get on most cable systems.
We're talking about how to contact your local cable company, the world, and so forth.
And we're really vulnerable to terrorist attacks and things simply because of our general ignorance
and lack of knowledge about what's going on in the rest of the world.
Maybe not WBI listeners are that ignorant about what's going on in the world, but people
in general really aren't that interested.
And if we had our finger on the pulse of what's going on in the world, I think we'd be less
blindsided by things that could lead to 9-11 type attacks.
So I think we should listen to this clip and get a retrospective of where we were four
and a half years ago and see how current these comments are to today.
Okay.
Well, this show was made on September 18th.
One week after September 11th, we were actually scheduled to be on the air September 11th,
but by the time we got to the studio, and we did get to the studio, the studio had no
power, so we were forced to not do a show that week.
But this is the first show afterwards, and here are a few comments that were made on
the air at that time.
And I'm thinking the civil liberties that we lost in the U.S. during the Cold War and
during World War II that we really didn't get back until Watergate when people were
outraged that you could abuse power that way.
And I don't want to have to wait for some Watergate 20 years down the road to regain
the civil liberties.
These things don't go back.
I mean, basically all the barricades going up in front of all the federal buildings,
they're not coming down.
And the thing is, they're not the answer.
That simply kind of ups the ante and says, well, you can't get us.
You have to think of something better.
And they do.
They think of something better.
They crash airplanes into the buildings then.
Our own airplanes.
They didn't even use their own.
They used ours.
Yeah.
It said American on it.
In a way, I have to say that if all the barricades were not there, yeah, we would be open
to more risk of terrorism.
But we would also, I don't think we would feel as victimized by it.
And it's kind of hard to explain this.
But I think terrorism is always going to be a reality of life.
And we have to deal with that.
We have to kind of protect ourselves in a different way.
And that's not by erecting barricades and closing things and searching everybody.
It's figuring out how this happened in the first place.
And I think that's what really gets me kind of angry is that we don't pay attention.
We don't pay attention.
And I've been railing about this for weeks, ever since I got back from Europe, how people in America,
people in the United States do not seem to care what's going on in the rest of the world.
We don't watch the news from other countries, everything.
In fact, right before this happened, literally moments before this happened, I was up early.
I never get up at this time.
But I had jury duty and I had to, I actually hadn't been called that day.
But since my hours were exactly the opposite as the hours they would have to be if I did get called,
I had to kind of wean myself to like waking up in the morning.
So I woke up at 7 in the morning because I might have to wake up at 7 in the morning the next day.
And when I did that, I turned on the TV to see if there was any news on.
And, yeah, there was news.
Michael Jordan might be coming back to the NBA.
The person who drowned her kids, she's facing trial.
And, you know, all this stuff over and over again on all the channels.
There were like 7 different channels and they all had the same stories,
not a single one having to do with anything in another part of the world,
just all this regional stuff.
And it just got me angry.
And I turned the TV set off and walked out to make some tea and my phone rang.
And then the TV came back on for the rest of the week.
But I'm just saying, you know, by not paying attention to what's happening in the rest of the world,
we don't see the warning signs of what's coming.
Wow, that is a fascinating conversation.
And no tape has to be noticed.
That was a really good sounding one, very clean.
But apart from that, you know, just fascinating discussion about things that are going on in the world.
September 18th, one week after 9-11,
when everybody else was waving flags and following the president blindly and that kind of thing,
here at BAI we were already questioning things.
And that alone is a reason to support the radio station,
the fact that we have that kind of voice, that kind of spirit.
So regardless of what you want in exchange for your pledge,
whether it's the DVD set that we're offering, whether it's a TV be gone,
whether it's just a shirt or whether it's something else,
please make that call, 212-209-2950,
because you're making that call would ensure that this radio station is around for the next crisis,
whenever that happens, asking the difficult questions.
And really that in itself is almost premium enough.
Absolutely.
Those comments were very unpopular at the time.
They were.
There was a mob waiting for me when I got outside.
Really?
I still have the stone marks.
Ed Emanuel?
Yes.
You cut yourself off on that clip.
The next thing you said was, and I'm paraphrasing,
you said we're hearing reports now that Iraqi intelligence was involved in planning the 9-11 attacks.
And we were hearing reports just a week afterwards that Iraq was supposedly behind this,
which we know was not the case now.
Well, those reports are obviously being planted so that we would think that way.
But, you know, even if it were true, it's not too hard to fathom that, hey,
you piss off part of the world somehow by doing something to them.
They might react in some crazy way.
And, again, I say, you know, 10 years down the road,
when something else happens, are we really going to be surprised?
If you listen to these old shows, it's really fascinating retrospective.
It's sort of like, where were you when something happened?
Where were you when Kennedy was shot?
Or where were you when Luther King was?
Whatever.
You can actually put yourself back in place of what was going on at that time.
And it's really a very emotional experience, I think,
listening to some of these old shows because you can relate to these old issues.
And it gives you an interesting perspective to where we are now compared to then
and what has changed, what hasn't changed,
what we can learn from what has happened before.
It's really a really good experience to listen to some of these old programs.
That's why I encourage everyone to call and pledge to pour for WBAI
to listen to this kind of interesting commentary on the air.
212-209-2950.
We have one call on the line.
We have $750 that we've brought in so far tonight, $250 from my goal,
and I don't know how far from Mike's goal, but much further, I guess.
I guess so, yeah.
Is it $10,000 you want in this hour?
I don't know.
Well, you know, that's a little unreasonable.
It would be nice.
It would be great.
There are people out there who can make that happen.
Oh, sure.
I've seen them with their charge accounts.
212-209-2950.
Speaking of which, we do take Visa, American Express, MasterCard.
People don't say it in that order.
Visa, American Express, MasterCard, and I think we even take Discover.
Do we really?
I don't know.
I think Discover doesn't exist anymore.
What?
They don't?
They merged with someone.
No, they still exist.
But they're still called the Discover card because it's the one nobody takes.
They're actually going to start offering a debit card, if you're interested.
Oh, joy.
I have a card.
This card just got sent to me, in fact.
Apparently, when I paid my American Express bill online, I was also agreeing to get this card.
It says on it – you honestly didn't see that anywhere, but it says,
thanks for viewing the new summary of accounts.
Thanks?
That's what I have to do in order to pay the bill.
I didn't have any choice here.
And they sent me this little open for business card.
It says five points on it, and apparently it's worth $5.
And you can use it.
It's got a little number on it and everything.
You can use it sort of like a credit card.
They're very careful to point out that this is not a credit card.
And it says – they give you these two sheets of paper that sort of explain how to use it.
The card is not for use at taxi cabs, water taxis, or limousine services.
It seems like that would be a very convenient place to use it.
I know, but why do they have to go to the trouble of pointing out water taxis?
Well, there is a water taxi in New York City.
It's different from a taxi.
Sorry, one at a time.
There is a water taxi in New York City.
You might try and use it there.
And it's different from a taxi cab, so they have to differentiate.
Yeah, but the same letter gets sent to people in Kansas,
and I'm sure there are no water taxis there.
And I'm sure there are so many other things that it's probably not going to work on either,
like that bicycle taxi thing that they have.
How about a Hanson cab?
We don't know.
There's this whole – yes, Arsene.
What about elephants or helicopter taxis?
In certain parts of the country, you would have elephants instead.
In certain parts, they take cards for those.
But I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to use it there.
They also have this thing about restaurants, using the card at restaurants.
To use it at a participating restaurant that welcomes American Express cards,
it has to welcome it, not just take it,
simply present the card at the time of payment.
Yeah, $5.
I wonder how much I'll get for that.
The amount on the card must be sufficient to cover the purchase amount plus gratuity.
Now, this is something interesting.
I didn't know about this, and I guess it makes sense.
The restaurant industry's authorization system automatically adds to the purchase total
an amount to cover the gratuity approximately 20% at the time of authorization,
and the card will be declined if you don't have enough to cover that.
Now, when you pay for something in a restaurant, they take your –
they print out the little thing,
and then you fill in how much you want to tip on the piece of paper.
So obviously the amount that they already authorized has –
what if you give them like a $1,000 tip?
They won't be able to get it then because they haven't authorized that.
It makes sense, though, that they do that.
No, it doesn't.
Why doesn't it make sense?
It's scandalous.
They're forcing you to give 20%.
Well, you don't have to, though.
You can stiff them totally, and that's the amount that they're going to eventually get.
They're not actually taking the money from you.
They're just authorizing a charge.
Oh, okay.
It's a two-step process.
All right.
Yeah, but I always leave my tips in cash anyway, so there.
But there's another interesting thing in the whole agreement here.
Under misuse of the card, and of course my eyes gravitated to that immediately,
if you repeatedly attempt to use the card at non-participating establishments,
you will be subject to a service fee up to 30% of the unauthorized transaction amount.
Oh.
Now, if I go somewhere and try to bill something for $50,000,
are they trying to say that because I made that attempt, they're going to bill me 30% of that?
Or do I have to somehow succeed in billing that at a place that doesn't take the card?
I interpret that as them getting their own rear ends off the hook, pardon the phrase.
In other words, it may be difficult to find a participating store or restaurant,
and if a store or restaurant thinks it's participating
or leads you to think that they're participating but it's not,
you're the one who ends up losing money, not American Express, not the store, you.
I'm going to try to buy a MetroCard with this thing.
Do you think I can pull that off?
No.
Why can't I pull it off?
That thing has $5?
Yes, it has $5.
They ask you for your billing zip code now.
What are you going to put?
Oh, that's a good question.
I don't know.
I guess I'll have to guess.
Can you buy these things anywhere else besides?
I don't know.
If you agree to view the statement, that is online.
Do you get it every time you view your statement?
Oh, that would be nice, wouldn't it?
Get $5 for paying the bill?
I'd like that, but I don't think so.
We're quickly running out of time.
So I wanted to play the quote of the week that, Mike, you have set up here.
I just want to play this.
It's an important history lesson from the Attorney General.
Okay.
Important history lesson from the Attorney General of the United States of America.
Listen up, children.
This is something that you could learn a lot from.
I gave in my opening statement some examples where President Washington,
President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt
have all authorized electronic surveillance of the enemy on a far broader scale.
Oh, he didn't say that.
Oh, he did.
He said that President Washington and Lincoln authorized electronic surveillance.
Now, this is something I wanted to know.
Obviously, there was no electronic anything except kites in Washington's day.
But I wanted to know if Lincoln had, in fact, authorized electronic surveillance on any scale at all.
And the answer may be yes because there were some very early telegraph systems in the Civil War,
so there may have been some surveillance.
Those weren't early.
But on a broader scale?
I don't know about a broader scale, though.
That seems a little – I don't know.
And the justification for this is that this was all okay,
yet this was all before a federal law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed in 1978
making it illegal for unwarranted surveillance to be done domestically, period, with no exception.
And yet he's saying, well, everybody else did this, so it's okay,
yet that was before the law was passed saying it's not okay.
Did he mention Nixon by any chance?
He didn't mention Nixon.
You'd think that he'd be at the top of the list.
Oh, well.
212-209-2950.
We have three calls on the line.
We're up to 875, so we can definitely do this if enough people call in.
We have one more clip that we're going to play.
And Jens, you made a special trip in to tell us all about the show that you listen to.
Yeah, I listen to a low-fidelity show.
And I should mention these are not bad.
They're not horrible to listen to like everyone's making them out to be.
They're pretty bad.
They're not that bad.
I listen to these shows.
You mean the low-fidelity version that's on the internet?
Yes.
The low-fidelity version is perfectly listenable,
and that's how I used to listen to the show because I could never pay attention to it while it's on.
I had too many other things going on.
So it's your contention then that there's no use for people to have the high-fidelity version.
It's better.
It's not horrible to have the low-quality versions, though.
But better is good, right?
Better is good.
It doesn't make you want to rip your hair out.
It's definitely worth, though, calling 212-209-2950.
It's like home versus a restaurant.
Yeah.
I'm just saying they're not that bad.
Go ahead and listen to them.
If you listen to the high-fidelity version, though,
is it not harder to go back and listen to the low-fidelity?
Well, probably.
Maybe it's a danger to listen to something good because here we go again.
They're writing the letters already.
I know it.
I have to say I'm biased because I can listen on the radio.
Well, yeah.
You're here.
That's true.
You can listen in the studio.
You don't even have to listen to the radio.
Now, Jens, this is from June 19th, 1991, I believe.
Yeah.
I tried to think of a significant date.
That was around the time I graduated high school,
so that sounded like a good one to listen to.
Were you listening to the show back then?
No, actually.
That was before I even knew the show existed.
So it was good.
It was good to hear.
But they talk about driver's license things, mag stripes in particular,
and now we're worried about RFID chips and 3D barcodes, 2D barcodes and whatnot.
Okay.
Let's see if we can squeeze this in.
Remember, 212-209-2950.
Keep those calls coming in.
$25 pledge gets you a shirt.
$75 gets you the TV be gone and the shirt.
$100 gets you the DVD, the Off the Hook Lifetime DVD,
including this show and many others, as well as the Off the Hook T-shirt.
And $150 gets you everything.
Let's listen to a clip from 1991.
Continuing right along here to the news that has come from the non-weekly world news part of things.
This is from the Electronic Newsletter Risks Digest, which we touch upon each week.
What about the new California driver's licenses that have thumbprints digitally encoded onto them?
This is from Mark Seacoff.
I still have an old California driver's license.
It will expire in late 1992.
I fear that when I get a new one, the magnetic strip on the back may accidentally be erased by some chance encounter with a strong magnetic field.
After all, I've had credit card strips fail.
And as some of you may know, when credit card strips fail, the card issuers don't rewrite the magnetic strip.
They just give you a whole new card.
Essentially, failed strips are a problem for merchants as well as credit card users,
because merchants get a discount on the fee they pay to the bank if they swipe a card rather than just taking an imprint.
Because it is unlawful to alter any driver's license in any manner not authorized,
a police officer would have probable cause to arrest the holder of a license with a bad magnetic strip.
If he became aware of that circumstance after, say, discovering that a portable reader can't read the strip.
Note that a police officer doesn't need probable cause to inspect your driver's license if you appear to be in control of an automobile.
And refusing to produce the license is an offense.
Now, unless the prosecutor could prove that the erasure was deliberate,
the license holder probably wouldn't be convicted but would already have spent the night in jail.
If cited and released, would have at least had to come to court.
Worse, a license holder might be violating the law without knowing it because the strip isn't human-readable.
Any system that might code information on the magnetic strip that didn't appear in human-readable form on the license card is inherently evil.
Data on magnetic strips is fragile.
I don't see how I'll be able to guard against the accidental erasure of the magnetic strip on any license issued to me.
Given my innocent predilection for toying with permanent magnets,
and the fact that I work with various sorts of electrical and electronic equipment,
who can say when an accidental erasure might occur?
Why it could even happen within minutes of my receipt of the new license.
You know, this guy sounds like a troublemaker.
I'm sure he's already been marked as such.
And more on the new California licenses, which are creating quite a stir all throughout the country.
Nothing like it has come to New York yet, but give it some time.
Okay, we're going to fade out there because this just goes on and on.
But Jens, it's an interesting program you picked out there.
Yeah, it was actually pretty good.
Later on they talked about the fear that police would start combining databases.
Wow, imagine that.
Imagine that.
So that's a show from 1991.
Of course you can get that along with every other show we've done in full high-fidelity sound.
For ever and ever, by calling now, 202-209-2950, pledging $100,
you'll get everything that's been released so far and everything that will be released in the future.
For $75, you'll get the TV Be Gone.
This is your last opportunity to get this.
It enables you to walk around with impunity, turning off TV sets.
Nobody will know who did it.
You can go into a bar and turn off that basketball game and have a nice quiet drink,
except for all the shouting around you, people wanting to know who did it.
But it's a tiny device, so you don't have to lug it around.
Nobody will know who it is who's causing all the mischief.
That's for a pledge of $75.
You'll get that plus the Off the Hook T-shirt, which every pledge 25 and above will get you.
For $150, you'll get everything.
Mike, you have some people to thank?
Yes.
We want to thank Punker Bob, who is from Jersey City.
Punker Bob.
We want to thank Brad, who is from Brentwood, New York.
Brad wants to know how he can get in touch with us for the upcoming HOPE Conference.
He can go to hope.net.
www.hope.net.
In fact, thank you, Brad, for reminding me.
Pre-registration has opened.
If you want to register now for the conference, go to 2600.com, hope.net, whichever one you want.
There will be links there that allow you to pre-register for the conference taking place this July in New York.
We also want to thank Arthur, who is from Port Washington.
I just pledged because the card was just handed to me.
All right.
We have 1105.
We've exceeded my goal, and we're getting closer to Mike's goal, which I guess is something that…
We're inching steadily closer, but you can still call 212-209-2950 and help achieve the secret goal.
You say 209.
I say 209.
Well, either way.
People who like to dial either way will know what to dial.
All right.
I want to thank everybody for being here tonight, for helping us out, contributing to the program,
contributing to the radio station.
And you have about two and a half minutes to continue doing that for this radio program, 212-209-2950.
Stay tuned for the personal computer show.
We'll be back not next week but in two weeks, and hopefully the station will have met all of its goals by then.
It's up to you.
212-209-2950.
Manuel Goldstein for Off The Hook.
Have a good night.